Restaurant review: Allan Brown at The Playwright

Exciting, modern cuisine is making a belated entrance in Dundee, courtesy of The Playwright

Dundee isn't very big on gastronomy, in much the same way as Gdansk isn't big on origami. In restaurant years, it is still a glint in the milkman's eye. It's a city that always reminds me of Jimmy Carr's quip about growing up in Berkshire: "If you want to know what Slough was like in the 1970s," he said, "go there now."

Change occurs at a geological rate in Dundee. Its most famous export, the RSS Discovery, was a ship built to inch through the compacted ice of the Antarctic. This pretty much seems Dundee's default setting, and slower on half-day closing.

The pre-theatre Italian and the post-pub Indian still set the tone. And those little bakeries selling obscure pies and buns of a type so regionally specific that only anthropologists can explain them properly. In vain will you hunt the city centre's dark, ornamental streets for the charming little